Traditional farming sacrificed to Foreign seed Companies-AFSA

A traditional farmer in Kenya

By Duke Tagoe

Participants at an advocacy workshop organized by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty In Africa (AFSA) in Accra, Ghana have express disapproval of a plant variety protection protocol recently signed by a few African diplomats in Tanzania. The protocol frowns on collective intellectual property rights and will displace indigenous seeds that have formed the backbone of human society since primitive communalism.

Under what has been christened the “Arusha PVP Protocol”, local farmers with small farm sizes but who ensures sustainable agriculture, provide diversity in food crops and who are in the lead of the campaign to eradicate hunger, will be greatly marginalized.

Opanyin Kwame Sekyere, a local organic seed producer from Offuman in the Techiman district of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana understands the criminality of the protocol so well. In an exclusive interview with this reporter in February this year, he said “… by soliciting my support to formulate a bill which seeks to make me rich and overcome poverty by registering my seeds but demanding that those seeds must be new, stable, distinct and uniform is like seeking my consent to dress me naked by removing my clothes and then drive me to the streets to be mocked at.

“The seeds I multiply under my huts you find over there were special seeds given to me by my father when I first married my wife. I survive by multiplying the seeds for the farmers in my community who in turn bring me some grains and other crops from their harvest. I also cultivate some of the seeds with my family on my fifteen acres of land. As I understand, the Plant Breeders Bill before the parliament does not accept my seeds and that is why I will not qualify for registration under the bill” he explained.

But the traditional farmer is even more disturbed. According to him, no parliamentarian alive to his responsibilities unless he be a bandit, a rogue or ignorant, will seek to pass a bill which will disrupt his livelihood because he mandates that parliamentarian to represent him.

A full text of the statement issued after the Pan African advocacy workshop is published below unedited;

African governments sell out their farmers in secret seeds protection deal

African governments, ignoring the protests of their farmers and civil society, in July 6, 2015, agreed an oppressive 'plant variety protection protocol' that will open up their countries to commercial seed monopolists, while limiting farmers rights to save, use, exchange, replant, improve, distribute and sell the seeds they have developed over countless generations.

On 6th July 2015, in Arusha, Tanzania, a Diplomatic Conference held under the auspices of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation (ARIPO) adopted a harmonised regional legal framework for the protection of plant breeders' rights.

The Arusha Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants ('Arusha PVP Protocol') is a slightly revised version of a previous Draft ARIPO Protocol for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (the 'ARIPO PVP Protocol').

The previous Draft has come under consistent and severe attack by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) because it is based on a Convention known as UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) 1991 - a restrictive and inflexible international legal precept, totally unsuitable for Africa.

Crucially, the ARIPO PVP Protocol proposed extremely strong intellectual property rights to breeders while restricting the age-old practices of African farmers freely to save, use, share and sell seeds and/or propagating material.

These practices are the backbone of agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa; they have ensured the production and maintenance of a diverse pool of genetic resources by farmers themselves, and have safeguarded food and nutrition for tens of millions of Africans in the ARIPO region.

Traditional farming sacrificed to seed monopolists

The Arusha PVP Protocol is part of the broader thrust in Africa to ensure regionally seamless and expedited trade in commercially bred seed varieties for the benefit, mainly, of the foreign seed industry. Multinational seed companies intend to lay claim to seed varieties as their private possessions and to prevent others from using these varieties without the payment of royalties.

Germplasm developed by farming households over centuries is increasingly under threat of privatization; and ecologically embedded farming practices risk being destabilised and dislodged.

The broader modernization thrust of which the Arusha PVP Protocol is an intrinsic part, is designed to facilitate the transformation of African agriculture from peasant-based production to inherently inequitable, inappropriate and ecologically damaging Green Revolution/industrial agriculture.

Such a transformation will lead to many farming households being threatened with marginalisation or extinction, without alternative options for survival.

It is worthwhile to note that a 2002 Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Bank study, the 'International Assessment of Knowledge, Science and Technology' (IAASTD), strongly recommended a complete shift away from the Green Revolution's industrial agriculture to agroecology.

Exclusion of African civil society

Despite AFSA's well-established track record of constructive engagement with ARIPO on the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol, and despite it being a Pan African network of African regional farmers and NGOs, working with millions of African farmers and consumers, AFSA was purposely excluded from the Arusha deliberations.

This restriction stands in sharp contrast to inclusion in the deliberations of the UPOV Secretariat, and other foreign entities, including the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) the European Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) and the French National Seed and Seedling Association (GNIS). The commercial seed industry (e.g. the African Seed Trade Association (AFSTA)) was particularly well represented.

The Arusha PVP Protocol has major implications for national decision-making. AFSA's exclusion is a violation of the right of farmers to participate in decision-making on matters related to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (Article 9.2(c ) of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).

Least Developed Countries and sui generis options             

Upon adoption, the Arusha PVP Protocol was immediately signed by representatives of the governments of Ghana, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, and the Gambia. Ironically, Mozambique, the Gambia and Sao Tome and Principe are defined as Least Developed Countries (LDCs), along with a further 10 of the 19 members of ARIPO - some of the poorest countries in the world.

LDCs are currently not under any international obligation to provide any form of plant variety protection until 2021, let alone one based on UPOV 1991! In any event, all countries have an option to develop sui generis (i.e. unique) plant variety protection systems that cater for their specific conditions.

Acceptance of the Arusha PVP Protocol will eliminate this option. Smaller countries are bullied into accepting their subordination to regional bodies that are dominated by more powerful foreign countries and multinational corporate interests.

The countries involved as ARIPO members are Botswana, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda Zambia and Zimbabwe.

National sovereignty and slight changes

During the deliberations in Arusha, several delegations raised serious concerns that the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol eroded national sovereignty because of the extensive decision-making powers vested in the ARIPO Plant Breeders Rights Office (PBRO), which operates at a regional level.

The government of Malawi, in particular, said that this would "have a demeaning and nullifying effect". Consequently, after long hours of negotiation, changes were made that now give Contracting States an explicit right to object to any Plant Breeders' Right (PBR) - as granted by the ARIPO PBRO, regionally - in which event the PBR will not be awarded national protection.

Further, Contracting States and not the ARIPO PBRO will have the right to issue compulsory licenses in the public interest.

Notwithstanding these changes, a centralised regional PVP approval system will be established and the ARIPO PBRO will have full authority to grant and administer breeders' rights on behalf of all Contracting States (e.g. to decide whether or not to grant protection, nullify or cancel PBRs, etc).

These regionally granted PBRs will have a uniform effect in all Contracting States. Expediently, Contracting States will be required to put scarce public resources at the disposal of breeders to enforce breeders' rights at the national level.

Joining UPOV 1991 - and shirking ITPGRFA-guaranteed farmers' rights

The Arusha PVP Protocol will come into force when four member states of ARIPO ratify it. In April 2014 the UPOV Council, at the cost of breaking its own rules, verified that the Draft ARIPO PVP Protocol conformed to the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention, allowing ARIPO itself as well as ARIPO Members that ratify the Protocol, to become Parties to the 1991 UPOV Convention.

With the new changes, to become a member of UPOV 1991, ARIPO will have to re-submit the Arusha PVP Protocol to the UPOV Council, to reassess its conformity with the 1991 Act.

Hence AFSA calls on UPOV members to reject the Arusha PVP Protocol. On numerous occasions AFSA has challenged the legitimacy of the whole process-leading up to and culminating in the adoption of the Arusha PVP Protocol.

AFSA has also indicated, in many public statements during discussions on the Protocol, that UPOV 1991 restricts farmers' rights to save, exchange and sell farm-saved-seed and/or the propagating material of protected varieties in their possession.

Farmers' rights are recognised in the ITPGRFA yet this has been ignored by the 14 member states of ARIPO that are also Parties to the ITPGRFA. By adopting the Arusha PVP Protocol these countries have placed the rights of plant breeders ahead of farmers' rights.

AFSA vows to continue struggle for seed sovereignty

AFSA is vehemently opposed to the Arusha PVP Protocol. This Protocol's underlying imperatives are to increase corporate seed imports, reduce breeding activity at the national level, and facilitate the monopoly by foreign companies of local seed systems and the disruption of traditional farming systems.

AFSA remains committed to ensuring that farmers, as breeders and users, remain at the centre of localised seed production systems and continue to exercise their rights freely to save, use, exchange, replant, improve, distribute and sell all the seed in their seed systems.

………………………………

BERNARD GURI,

CHAIRPERSON

ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN AFRICA

ACCRA, AUGUST 8, 2015,

EXPORT-LED DEVELOPMENT IS A PROBLEM

Edward Kareweh

By Duke Tagoe

Edward Kareweh, Deputy General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has called on the Government to move away from the export led development mindset. That mindset, he said, is as an ideological orientation which retards progress.

Pointing to a major flaw in government policy, he explained that our continuing support for every production that leads to export of raw materials reinforces our dependency because we do not produce what we consume at home.

“To use state resources to meet the taste of foreign consumers and further the development needs of external people is detrimental to the national interest and runs contrary to the principles that underline nation building.

Edward Kareweh was speaking at a workshop organized to evaluate the benefit of the Export Trade, Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) for small holder farmers in the Brong Ahafo, Greater Accra and the Northern Regions.

The Export Development and Investment Fund (EDIF) currently the Export Trade, Agricultural and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) was established by the Export Development and Investment Fund Act, 2000 (Act 582), and it became operational in 2001 as an agency of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

The act was, however, amended in 2001 by the Export Development and Investment Fund (Amendment) Act, 2011 (Act 823), to expand the scope of application of the fund to include the development and promotion of agro-processing industry, hence the change of the name of the fund to EDAIF.

EDAIF operates by handing over money to designated financial instructions or banks like Stanchart, Stanbic and the ADB. These banks then evaluate prospective applicants to find out about their financial viability before they get the funding. The challenge for many farmers is that they need to write proposals which are assessed to find out if they meet the criteria. This presents a challenge for most farmers who cannot read nor write good proposals.

In spite of the concerns raised, Micheal Awuku, a top official at the EDAIF Secretariat says export oriented development is the bulwark of the economic policy of the Government of Ghana  adding that the main thrust of Government's foreign trade policy has been the endorsement of Private Sector led export development. He said the policy would offer the country substantial increase in foreign exchange receipts and appreciable opportunity for growth but Ben Kanati, a rice farmer from Ashaiman disagrees.

According to him funding that encourages the production of cash crops for foreign markets does not benefit small holders who produce local and indigenous crops to feed the majority of the Ghanaian people. “That attitude deprives local farmers of the needed revenue to expand and grow more to meet the local market. On the other hand pressure builds for lower tariffs for already highly subsidised imported goods which in turn affect government’s tax revenue. When that happens, it constrains government space and we end up going to borrow from IMF and the World Bank with attendant negative social consequences.

The primary source of funding for the EDAIF fund is money realized from the divestiture of state enterprises.

Madam Victoria Adongo, Programmes Officer of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana says small farmers also want to go commercial by expanding not for export but to meet the increasing demand for the local market. According to her, a halt in the import of frozen chicken and support to the local poultry industry will also benefit maize and soya farmers because they provide quality feed for the poultry industry. 

In his contribution to the discussion, Kweku Boateng, a vegetable farmer explained that South Africa has the biggest vegetable market in the world because the government set up councils to support farmers. According to him, vegetable farmers in Johannesburg for instance send their produce to the Johannesberg Food Council who buys them and sell on the local market. Cocoyam, potato and cassava farmers have grades which determine the prices of their produce.

Mr Boateng is calling on EDAIF to use the money in their possession to build infrastructure and make markets available for farmers to sell the product of their labour, make money and thereby remove the over reliance on grant and credit facilities.

GM AND SEED INDUSTRY EYE WEST AFRICA’S LUCRATIVE COWPEA SEED MARKET

The African Centre for Biodiversity
www.acbio.org.za
PO Box 29170, Melville 2109 South Africa
Tel: +27 (0)11 486 1156

The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has today released a new report titled, GM and seed industry eye Africa’s lucrative cowpea seed markets: The political economy of cowpea in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Malawi.  The report shows a strong interest by the seed industry in commercialising cowpea seed production and distribution in West Africa, where a very lucrative regional cowpea seed market is emerging. Cowpea, one of the most ancient crops known to humankind, with its centre of origin in Southern Africa, provides the earliest food for millions of Africans during the ‘hungry season’ before cereals mature.

The report argues that the GM cowpea push in Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Ghana co-incides with this strong interest from multinational and local seed companies to produce foundation and certified seed in West Africa.

Commercialising Seed Production
According to Mariam Mayet of the ACB, “There is a corporate push backed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the G8 New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition to harmonise seed laws and intellectual property rights legislation on the basis of the Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV) 1991. This push seeks to create regional markets for crops that otherwise would not have the economies of scale for corporate investment. Corporate investment in regional seed markets relies on varieties being released onto regional lists and that are immediately made available at national levels without further trials. It is within this context that the push for the harmonisation of seed laws at regional levels must be understood.”

According to the ACB, the danger of commercialisation of seed production is that it is accompanied by the locking out of smallholder farmers from seed production and distribution- essential life processes in African agriculture. Farmers will be transformed from active participants in the cowpea value chain, to mere passive consumers of expensive certified seed produced elsewhere.

The GM cowpea push
The pro-GM organisation, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), is spearheading a GM cowpea project aimed at commercially growing  Bt cowpea in Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso. Field trials of the Bt cowpea underway in Nigeria and Burkina Faso are at advanced stages, with commercialisation expected in 2016/17. The GM cowpea project is funded by USAID, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) and the Rockefeller Foundation. The GM cowpea contains the Cry1Ab Bt gene developed by Monsanto. The genetic engineering of the Bt cowpea was conducted by the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, previously involved in a biosafety scandal.

GM cowpea threatens food sovereignty
Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje of Environment Rights Action Nigeria concurs with the ACB report that the the introduction of GM cowpea “will pose a serious threat to food sovereignty in West Africa where cowpea occupies a clearly defined social, economic, nutritional and agro-ecological niche. Cowpea connects agriculture to the local environment; consumers to locally produced healthy foods; and farmers to productive resources such as locally enhanced seeds. The commercialisation of cowpea seed production in Africa will dislocate such a locally interconnected system.”

Reductionist solution
The GM cowpea is engineered to be resistant to the Maruca legume pod borer on the basis that “farmers in West Africa have identified Maruca insects as major problems in cowpea production.”

However, according to the ACB report, farmers are confronted with a myriad of agronomic and post-harvest challenges. The Bt solution responds only to one narrow aspect of production (pod borer), and it requires a significant increase in input cost, despite viable methods of biological control already in practice amongst farmers.

Dangerous opening for commercialising seed production
According to Bern Guri of CIKOD in Ghana, “Traditional farming practices based on recycling farm-saved seed and the use of locally-adapted seed varieties are threatened by a transgenic variety of cowpea that would set a precedent for the systematic commodification of cowpea seeds. Farmers can ill afford the costs of GM seeds and the associated agro-chemical inputs required by the use of these seeds. The high prices that characterise the GM technological package will contribute to jeopardising already fragile socio-economic systems.”

Risk to human health and environment
Bright Phiri from Commons for EcoJustice in Malawi, is also concerned that the Bt cowpea has been developed using the Cry1Ab gene, the same gene contained in Monsanto’s GM maize event, MON810. According to Phiri “the health risks associated with MON810 have been clearly established and are deeply concerning.”

The report also cautions that the Bt-gene will escape from domesticated to wild and cultivated cowpea, which will trigger unknown and irreversible adverse ecological impacts.

Socially just and ecologically sustainable solutions
The report concludes that rather than promoting a tragically flawed agricultural development model that brings enormous risks, solutions are to be found in more sustainable social, economic and agro-ecological food production systems.  The ACB continues to insist that an equitable and sustainable solution to seed production and distribution can only come from direct engagement with farmers and their organisations to ensure their active involvement in these activities.

 Ends

Contact:

Mariam Mayet: mariam@acbio.org.za
Bern Guri: guribern@gmail.com
 Mariann Bassey-Orovwuje mariann@eraction.org
Bright Phiri: bmphiri@live.com